ONGOING AND UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

www.strozzina.org/greenplatform/e_index.php

curated by Lorenzo Giusti and Valentina Gensini Green Platform takes a complex critical view designed to examine at stake in an interdisciplinary fashion the issue of the environment in the dual sense of a crisis in our thermo-industrial society based on non-renewable sources of energy and of an ecological crisis caused by pollution and by the worrying overheating of our planet. The problem of ecology cannot be confined merely to an environmental approach, it needs to be analyzed and understood in its myriad philosophical, psychological, environmental, economic and social implications. Thus ecology is no longer defined solely as a natural science but as a science of interrelations, confines and cross-border osmosis, the focal link in the partnership between nature and culture. The exhibition presents a series of works by international artists who, acting in the wake of the pioneer experience that developed in the avant-garde movements of the Sixties and Seventies, address the issues of the environment, ecology and sustainability. Different artistic approaches and attitudes are compared, ranging from an awareness of the critical state of the everyday and pragmatic relationship between man and nature, to the choice of sustainable practices that put at stake a new idea of progress, to a creative pro-activism that pursues a real ecological struggle through the artistic languages. Not only thought as an exhibition but as a working composite platform, Green Platform is based on the attempt of offering various kinds of active experience: workshops with artists and other players in the environmental associations and NGO's, a series of lectures with experts in various relevant disciplines and the screening of videos and documentaries on environment-related issues. The exhibition’s catalogue with entries by international authors from a variety of different backgrounds and cultures (from economy to architecture, from social sciences to public art) sets up a perfect tool for reflecting about a new idea of art and about its possible, new and “sustainable” development. Artists whose work will be on display in the exhibition: Alterazioni Video, Amy Balkin, Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna, Michele Dantini, Ettore Favini, Futurefarmers, Tue Greenfort, Henrik Håkansson, Katie Holten, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Christiane Löhr, Dacia Manto, Lucy and Jorge Orta, Julian Rosefeldt, Carlotta Ruggieri, Superflex, Nicola Toffolini and Nikola Uzunovski

www.strozzina.org/inventoriesofabstraction/e_index.php

site specific installation in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi

After the Chinese artist Wang Yu Yang with his light installation ‘Artificial Moon’, this will be the second of a series of works by international artists who have been invited to Florence to create and present installations conceived for the cortile of Palazzo Strozzi. The Swiss artist Yves Netzhammer, selected to represent Switzerland at the last Venice Biennial 2007, is known for his poetic 3D installations which reflect the human condition. The Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina has invited him to conceive an installation which will homage the unique renaissance architecture of Florence and specifically the one of the marvellous courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi.

Realtà Manipolata

25 September 2009 – 17 January 2010

Today a new generation of photographers, video artists and film directors explicitly refuse manipulation and play at a high degree of technical know-how with the possibilities of the medium, the ‘motif’ and the viewer’s expectations, creating completely new visions of the so-called reality. This exhibition project wants to raise and analyze some of the main positions currently at stake presenting a broad range of current photographic art works putting them in a conceptual dialogue with single paintings or video art works. The exhibition wants to question the term ‘reality’ especially in its close connection with media representation. The diverse scientific disciplines have declared a change of paradigm stating that the generally accepted idea of ‘real world’ does not exist as autonomous category, but only as mere projection and construction of the individual. Nonetheless, in everyday life, we still tend to elevate reality and truth as objective factors which constitute the basis of our acts and believe. Users worldwide, and especially teenagers, have completely changed the handling of images and their idea of reality due to the omnipresence of mobile phones with digital cameras. Everything can be documented at anytime to than be released publicly on Internet sites like Facebook or MySpace (communication forums), YouTube (public broadcast site) or Google Maps (which combines maps with personal pictures) or even contribute to phenomena like citizen journalism. Throughout its history, photography has always situated itself between the two opposite poles - reality and manipulative strategies. But today the manifold possibilities of digital manipulation have modified the general trust in photographic images (and this includes video and film). Since digitalisation, photography has not only lost its last vestiges of physicality and therefore the idea of the ‘original’, but by overcoming the negative film, manipulation has become impossible to trace. So what are the new paradigms? Are truth and reality still a concept that artists take into account? What are the mutual influences of high and low culture?

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